Fear: a cultural history

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Actress Janet Leigh from the shower scene in Hitchcock's Psycho - the face of fear or the marker of a neurotic culture?

Fear: A Cultural History,
By Joanna Bourke,
Virago, $59.95

Why do we "pull a face" in the face of fear - contort our facial
muscles into an expression that conveys terror?

In the 19th-century brawl over evolution, this face of fear
became a debating point. Since the physical expression of panic
appears the same in every culture and place, some argued a divine
cause - God had given people a way to convey their most extreme
feelings, whatever the barriers of language.

Charles Darwin was not convinced. Such grimaces, he suggested,
were involuntary and accidental. Evolution had provided facial
muscles to control speaking, shade our eyes, chew food. When we
experienced fear our muscles tightened to take flight, and we
assumed - without meaning to - an expression that signalled
dread.

If we know pulling a face serves no real purpose, can we control
our fearful reaction? Darwin decided to test this by visiting the
reptile house at the London Zoological Gardens. Standing behind
thick glass, protected from harm, could Darwin keep a straight face
as a puff adder lunged?

As Darwin told his diaries, the answer was an emphatic no.
Though he tried hard to remain calm, fear proved instinctual. Each
time the snake rushed towards the glass Darwin found himself
leaping " . . . a yard or two backwards with astonishing rapidity.
My will and reason were powerless against the imagination of a
danger which had never been experienced."

Darwin concluded that our fear reflexes are guided by ancient
circuits deep in the human brain. The face of fear is a by-product
of our "fight or flight" reflex. That everyone behaves in similar
fashion shows only that we share a common evolutionary
heritage.

Joanna Bourke frames Fear: A Cultural History with this
story. Fear has long fascinated those keen to understand human
nature. And since Darwin's time fear has been a constant in Europe
and US, the canvas for Bourke's study.

Still a young professor at Birkbeck College in London, Bourke
has become something of a star historian in Britain. Her recent
projects include a BBC series on the history of the 20th century,
and a forthcoming history of rape.

Bourke's publications include the gruelling An Intimate
History of Killing, in which soldiers recount their experience
of slaughtering others during battle. The hint of exhilaration
behind the flat accounts of killing made disturbing reading.

Bourke's new book contains much about war, but extends the study
to an array of fears, from disease and disaster to terrorism. Some
of the best writing in the book pays attention to private fears.
Bourke is compelling on childhood terrors, crowds, mysterious
illnesses, terror about the wrath of God.

Some fears lend themselves to neat commercial solutions. Bourke
recounts panic during the later 19th century about being buried
alive. To sooth agitated minds, Franz Vester of New Jersey patented
a coffin in 1868 complete with a breathing tube to the surface, a
bell to attract attention and a folding ladder for climbing out of
the grave. More pragmatic souls wrote wills demanding their throats
be slit before burial to prevent any nasty surprises later.

The material about fear is rich, and Bourke balances grand
themes with quirky detail. Still, this complex and lengthy book
suffers from an inevitable incoherence.

The point of the undertaking is never entirely clear, because
the structure is not driven forward by a cogent argument. When
Bourke describes a culture in which fear is pervasive, which
terrors deserve a place in the index?

Drawing on psychology and history, she suggests that fear has
been a fixation of the past 150 years, always looking for a new
subject.

Thus, alarm can be sparked by reports of invading Martians or
just concern about strangers in the street. Deep unconscious
impulses make for a neurotic culture.

In a final chapter Bourke works hard to draw lessons from an
entertaining but scattered story. Sometimes people manipulate our
fears for partisan advantage. It is easy to deplore the "law and
order" auction at election time or the intrusions to privacy
sanctioned by a war on terror.

Bourke writes cogently about the manipulation of public opinion
following the attacks on America on September 11, 2001.

Yet fear, it turns out, is sometimes a reasonable response to
the world. It is a powerful force for shaping behaviour - the
ultimate stimulant. When we leap backwards, we feel something so
fundamental it has no name, just a will we must heed.

The puff adder rears, and we remember what it means to be
alive.

Professor Glyn Davis is vice-chancellor of the University
of Melbourne.